30,000 women are ready to run for office and save America from Trump

Trump has ignited an unprecedented surge in women who want to join the political process.

The grassroots revolution continues to expand, and now more than 30,000 women are ready to run for office and fight back against Donald Trump.

That’s how many women EMILY’s List has heard from since Election Day in 2016 expressing interest in becoming candidates.

“These 30,000 women are the next generation of leaders and candidates – and they will change the face of politics and power in this country forever,” says Stephanie Schriock, president of the group that trains and funds pro-choice women and helps them run for office.

For context, in 2015 and 2016, a grand total of 900 women contacted EMILY’s List about running for office during that election cycle. So the 30,000 number is completely off the charts.

And it continues to expand. By August of 2017, 16,000 women had contacted EMILY’s List. Today it’s 30,000.

“To date, 390 women are planning to run for the House of Representatives, a figure thats higher than at any point in American history,” New York magazine reports this week. “Twenty-two of them are non-incumbent black women  for scale, there are only 18 black women in the House right now. Meanwhile, 49 women are likely to be running for the Senate, more than 68 percent higher than the number whod announced at the same point in 2014.”

Republican leaders have failed to secure their top-choice candidate in eight of the 10 Senate races in states that Trump won in 2016, and Florida Gov. Rick Scott has yet to commit to his expected run for Sen. Bill Nelsons seat, Politico recently reported.

But the grassroots revolution underway isn’t just about women running for the House and the Senate, or running for governor. It’s about women running for every possible public office, most often on a state or very local levels.

It’s about women like 23-year-old Crystal Murillo who last year won a seat on the traditionally conservative cit council in Aurora, Colorado. In the process, she ousted a Republican incumbent and fervent Donald Trump supporter.

Murillos family moved to the United States from Mexico two decades ago. She became the first member of her family to graduate high school, and then college, earning a bachelors degree from the University of Denver.

Meanwhile, the stampede away from Trump and the GOP among women voters has likely been unprecedented for any first-year president.

Asked which party they would vote for in the midterm elections, 64 percent of American women in a recent ABC News/Washington Post poll said they would pull the lever for a Democratic candidate, compared to just 29 percent for Republicans  a stunning 35-point advantage for Democrats.

“What should worry Trump and his Republicans most isn’t just that Democratic women are running  but that they’re winning,” Schriock said, pointing to the incredible victory in Virginia last November, where Democrats flipped 11 seats in the House of Delegates, and to the EMILY’s List-endorsed candidate Patty Schachtner, who flipped a state Senate seat in Wisconsin this week, in a district Trump won by 17 points.

Schachtner was the 34th Democrat to flip a red state legislature seat since Trump’s inauguration.

“One year into Trump’s presidency, and the message is clear: Women aren’t backing down, and we’re going to win.”